[mfrommil]

My prediction is that to be competitive, companies will eventually need to rely on AI-produced code to some extent or risk being slower and less efficient than competitors. It would be like not using email or messaging and only using snail mail for all written communication.

But AI is nowhere close to perfect now, and will have flaws for a long time. Having AI write code is like having a so-so junior engineer, who can complete the task, but makes mistakes, so needs their code reviewed closely. And is unable to architect anything complex, that still needs to be done by the leads/managers/senior folks.

So more and more of the simple, low complexity coding tasks will be done by AI, while the value of importance of senior engineers will be as high as ever, since they need to oversee the AI's outputs.

What I wonder is how junior engineers, who will be starting their careers out as more expensive or weaker coders to AI, will get the experience necessary to become the senior engineers that need to guide/review the AI's work?

[graphe]

Like they used cheap Indian coders to save money and now everything is better?

It'll be a test of try to pay less and probably a bunch of spaghetti code fixes after.

[ActionHank]

There are an unsettling number of NA startups that seem to aggressively hire remote workers or contractors in Asia\Africa and then a couple mid to senior people in NA timezones.

They build their product and then just seem to fizzle out. My guess that the technical debt and lack of talent retention kills them.

[mywittyname]

Technical people are more valuable than the code they produce. The good ones have domain expertise and can guide product development in a way that takes advantages of emerging tech, long before it becomes mainstream, and positions the company to capitalize on market movements sooner.

Business that don't have technical leaders in their senior leadership aren't tech companies. They will fall behind quickly because they are busy chasing what's hot yesterday vs what's going to be hot soon.

10 years ago, I worked for a F500 company that fired their research team who was working on generative AI (and made solid progress) because senior leadership was all about investing in blockchain. Remember blockchain? I'm willing to bet those same leaders are all about the "AI future" now that it's in the magazines. But the problem is they are competing with companies who saw the value of generative AI years ago, before it was mainstream. Lucky for them, the company has enough money to buy the startup competition for a few billion.